what is the purpose of the quarterly ports branches?

[Julian Elischer]

they are effectively useless because the results are not archived, and 
the quarterly pkg branch actually changes day by day, so making two 
machines from the same quarterly branch can give you different 
machines (making it useless for paying work)

not to mention that if you use the quarterly pkg branch you run he 
risk of it completely changing if you happen to be unlucky enough to 
be doing it across a quarterly boundary. then you end up with a 
completely messed up system. (from experience).


SO a couple of things.. new quarterly pkg releases should have 
different names and be pointed to by a symlink or something. Other 
wise you can't avoid the smashed system problem. (half the pkgs from 
one quarter and the other half from the previous one, which you can't 
find any more.


But the big question still remains..

What do you think you are solving and why are they changing? shouldn't 
a snapshot be stable?